My Student Tomato-Meter: 2017 Edition

The Fall semester is about to began, which means it’s that time of year when I post my updated “student tomato-meter” showing the aggregated results of the ratings — on a scale from one-to-10 — that my students have given to every movie I’ve shown in my film studies classes dating back to the Spring 2009 semester. I’ve now taught 96 classes and shown a total of 447 unique movies. Below is a list of all the films I’ve screened to date, presented in chronological order by release date, along with the average ratings given by my students. Below that I’ve also included a list of the top 10 highest-rated films. My goal as a teacher is to show at least one movie by every great director who ever lived. Please scan the list below and feel free tell me in the comments section who you think I might be missing.

3 responses to “My Student Tomato-Meter: 2017 Edition”

This list was a revelation and I thank you for sharing it. What I learned is this: My students are not really very different from the students you teach. There were some surprises here, primarily films that got a very good response that I would never have thought to show. I have one particular question to ask about one of the films in your top ten: How on earth did you ever get students to sit down long enough to watch Lagaan?? This isn’t a knock of the film, it’s a logistical question. I guess I have a couple of other logistical questions too. How much viewing do you usually require as homework? Do most of the colleges where you teach have both “viewing” contact hours and “lecture” contact hours for film classes? My 3 cr. courses allow for about 2 hrs and 45 minutes of contact time and that’s it.

Thanks for the response. I’m fortunate that the school where I teach most of my classes, Oakton Community College, has 4 credit hour classes that meet for 4 hours a week. This is conducive to watching feature films in class and still having more than enough time for lecture and discussion. Having said all that, I STILL split up viewing LAGAAN across two class periods – which is easy to do since the film has a built-in intermission.